Wednesday, February 25, 2015

The Originals, Season 2, Episode 14: I Love You Goodbye

Having rather awesomely used himself as a spark for the
bomb, Elijah joins up with Camille and creepy-demon-baby Hope (she and the baby
off Grimm are going to go to the same creepy demon crèche)

Haley has heard of the big explosion and her daughter
under threat and wants to ride to the rescue before Klaus stops her; it’s her
wedding day and becoming Queen (and being respected as queen) will do more for
Hope’s safety than her running off

After a brief interlude with Josh being sad that he tried
to eat Aiden, he’s hurried off so Davina and Kol can flirt and we’re all
supposed to not consider how utterly creepy it is that this thousand year old
vampire is lusting after a 17 year old. Kol offers to make Davina the magic
dagger which we are sure she will use with all her demonstrated wisdom.

Hah.

Freya isn’t out of the action just yet – and uses woo-woo
to resurrect Finn (so they don’t have to change actor, again, I guess).

Kol and Davina create the Dagger of Inevitably
Foolishness and are all ready to celebrate by making out when Finn as a
terrible headache and nose bleed (possibly caused by Freya’s shenanigans). Kol covers
the curse Finn dropped on him, because enlisting the help of the (apparently)
powerful witch Davina would be very sensible so there’s no way that’s going to
happen on this show. He calls Rebekah, completely inexperienced (for some damn
reason) witch instead

Which means Rebekah can’t go to the wedding so she gives
Hayley a beautiful wedding dress instead and Hayley raises the possibility of
human!Rebekah and Marcel getting together. Rebekah decides to keep that on hold
until she’s sure how long she’s going to be in a human body. She also adds that
Hayley will also be a Mikaelson though Hayley rather awesomely snarks about how
good a thing that is.

She goes to help Kol – and fails. Kol, the reckless rogue
is now afraid of death having endured it once, especially since he loves living
as a human without all the blood lost and HUGELY MELODRAMATIC VAMPRE MOODS
(well, he calls it “heightened emotion” but, honestly, making “melodramatic
angst monster” a side-effect of vampirisim is an ideal way of explaining just
about every character on this show).

Over to the wolves and Aidan and Jackson look at burning
bodies of all the Alphas who died when the vampires had their little moment,
thinking how best to spin it. Klaus shows up with a bag of even moooore
werewolf heads – but these are werewolves who followed Finn. Jackson is still
slightly put off at the idea of his slaughtered fellows being presented as a
gift but they realise, in Klaus’s twisted little way, this was meant to be a
kind gift. Because Klaus, basically. Klaus also offers his compound for the
wedding

To wedding preparations and Jackson tries to have the
standard “you’re not getting cold feet?” speech and Hayley throws back a rather
cold “this is a sound tactical decision” which may have just come with the
rider “don’t let the white dress fool you into thinking I’m in love.” Klaus
also have Hope brought back – with the arm of wolves (and all their enemies
already knowing about her) hiding is no longer the way to go

Klaus is more concerned with Elijah’s return maybe
scuppering the wedding since he and Hayley are in love. Elijah is pretty put
off by Klaus’s talk of “family duty” because it suggests Hayley may not have
chosen this; Klaus utterly fails to reassure him on this point

Hayley gets in the pretty dress and actually stands within 10 feet of the baby –
a baby, the source of all mess in the world! Elijah, sensing terrible clothing
abuse about to happen, arrives on scene to pull her away with some angst. He
starts to tell her he loves her and she stops him because this is quite literally
the worst moment, ever (clearly he is taking relationship cues from Caroline
“ask a guy if he’s into you in front of your mother’s corpse” on The Vampire Diaries). You do not wait to
say “I love you” until she’s in a white dress waiting to go down the aisle with
another man.

Aidan and Josh have their moment, meeting up to… break
up. Aiden is worried about super-wolves having a thing against vampires and
decides it’s best if they have a break. Which leads to Aidan asking Jackson if
he really thinks werewolves will get along with vampires; Jackson’s “if they’re
not, screw ‘em” isn’t exactly reassuring. He clues in on what Aiden’s actually
worried about and offer’s his support and the lack of need of any kind of
discussion – he adds that Aiden needs something to fight for. Hayley then
arrives in her dress and Aiden fades out. Jackson gives Hayley a pretty
necklace – saying she should have something that is hers. It’s all romantic and
sweet.

The wedding begins – and Aiden sits next to Josh and
holds hands (lucky him Josh forgave him or that would have been messy)

Wedding time! And it’s all pretty and nice, though Klaus
and Elijah hovering over proceedings is a little ominous, especially with
Elijah gasping and looking all devastated. When Hayley and Jackson kiss, the
eyes of every werewolf glow golden.

Elijah then confronts Klaus’s plan to murder Jackson. Of
course he does. Elijah is not impressed - though Klaus tries to taunt him into
killing him for marrying Hayley. Elijah decides to stalk Klaus the rest of the
night to stop him murdering – and to psychoanalyse Klaus; Klaus is afraid that
Jackson may be a better father to Hope than he is (and drawing on comparisons
with Klaus’s own daddy issues). Klaus points out that Elijah’s too unstable to
analyse him

While the wolves are celebrating their new super powers, Davina sees Kol
looking rather raggedy against a wall. He tells Davina he is cursed and dying

Klaus, Camille and Hope have a moment. Not much more to say about it.

Back to the celebrations, Josh and Aiden sweetly
reconciled and Klaus taking the opportunity to show off his daughter to the
crowd; to her pack and her family. He also invites Jackson and Hayley to move
into the compound. That’s cue for Elijah and Hayley to be dramatically angsty –
Elijah is moving out because seeing Hayley and Jackson living together under
the same roof would be epicly awful.

Davina and Rebekah try to come up with some way to save
Kol – and fail. Instead, Rebekah calls Elijah and Klaus to his side since he
won’t last the night. As they leave, Marcel notices Rebekah and recognises her
new body…

Time for dramatically sad goodbye scene where they try to
convince me to care about Kol dying. Or to think that any Original dying is
remotely a permanent state. And he’s still being all creepy with a 17 year old.

Hayley, Jackson wedding night – oh so awkward. Hayley
also decides to drag in some romance and how nice Jackson was and supportive
ever since she arrived in New Orleans. She also tries to claim their wedding
isn’t just politically useful.

The whole Hayley/Jackson marriage is generally something I
look upon with indifference or discomfort. Hayley marrying for purely political
reasons? Fair enough, I can see that – it shows she’s strong, capable and
willing to do what must be done and, yes, marrying Jackson isn’t exactly a fate
worse than death. But Jackson then being all gooey over what is so blatantly a
political decision on Hayley’s part is just kind of creepy. Yes, it’s a wedding
but she’s so obviously Not That Into him that his making it all gooshy feels
both desperate and vaguely coercive – he’s making the political expedience –
even necessity – of the marriage into pulling Hayley into a more romantic
connection than she’s clearly happy with. Yes, it’s a wedding, it’s supposed to
be romantic – but it doesn’t change that that’s not what Hayley’s there for
(and if it weren’t for politics, that’d be Elijah stood next to her. And yes it
must be bitter to have the exponentially hotter ex sharing pining looks with
the bride during the service). Especially since his persistence seems to have
won

I can see Elijah wanting to kill Jackson –I can also see
it being something the honourable man would never ever do (are all werewolves
immortal now thanks to Hayley? If not, be patient man) unless he lost control.
I dread the

But Klaus? This just feels like clumsy story writing, making Klaus wreck
everything so we can have more drama – he’s destructive but even he cannot
possibly see an advantage to killing Jackson nor does he have dramatic claims
of jealousy to justify himself

I like Josh and Aiden – there’s absolutely nothing to
complain about their portrayals. They clearly care about each other, they have a
romance and they’re trope free. But they’re also very Teen Wolf-ish as characters. They appear, maybe, once every 3
episodes and briefly. Sure, there’s nothing problematic about that brief
appearance – but it is a brief appearance. At the same time they could vanish
tomorrow and not leave a ripple in the world they’re part of; they’re not
involved in any main storylines (Gia is rapidly becoming the vampire second in
command and since the loss of Oliver, the werewolves seem to have dispensed
with the need for one as an active participant) and their storyline-ish
(because “two guys who date” isn’t a storyline because it isn’t developed
beyond that) doesn’t touch anyone else either. They’re pretty good tokens – but
tokens is what they are and they look a lot better than they are mainly against
the background of the paucity of LGBT representation in the genre. I like these
characters, I like their relationship and every time I see them I love their
scenes. I want far more of them, I want far more LGBT characters in the genre
to be like them. But I also want them to be more than 5 minutes screen time in
an episode and for them to be consistently in every episode.

Over the last 2 seasons and in Vampire Diaries as well, we’ve complained repeatedly about Rebekah
being weakened compared to her brothers – and it’s annoying that this is
continued even when they become human. The Original family were a family of
witches before they became vampires. Finn is a powerful and capable witch. Kol
is a powerful and capable witch. Rebekah… is a complete newbie to magic. Why?!
Why can she never be her brothers’ equal?

Kol’s dramatic death; is there a reason I’m supposed to
be even slightly emotionally attached to this man? How could anyone find him
endearing? Also he’s an Original vampire. He’s not going to die. No no he is
not.